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Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Preservation and Proposition

Our mission is to document the pivotal Second Amendment events that occurred in Frontier Mercersburg, and its environs, and to heighten awareness of the importance of these events in the founding of our Nation.

We are dedicated to the preservation of the place where the Second Amendment was "born" and to the proposition that the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") is the keystone of our Liberty and the Republic.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Following the recent school shooting in Connecticut, American citizens have once again displayed their total ignorance concerning the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment. Facebook postings, comments to so-called news articles and letters to the editor are calling for repeal of the Second Amendment. These individuals believe the right to own a firearm is based on the Second Amendment and the right will vanish if the Amendment can be repealed. Unless the Second Amendment created the right, then repeal of the Amendment cannot constitutionally abolish the right.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Monday to restart negotiations on a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global trade in conventional arms, a pact the powerful U.S. National Rifle Association has been lobbying hard against.

U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because U.S. President Barack Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney before the November 6 election if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge U.S. officials have denied.

The NRA, which has come under intense criticism for its reaction to the December 15 shooting massacre of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, opposes the idea of an arms trade treaty and has pressured Obama to reject it.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

By John R. Lott Jr. - December 26, 2012 9:02 am
USA Today - Has anyone noticed that these mass shootings at public schools increased after the 1995 Gun-Free School Zone Act? Passed with good intentions, banning guns would supposedly make schools safer.

But law abiding citizens, not criminals, obey these bans. Instead of making places safer, disarming law abiding citizens left them sitting ducks.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

By Ryan James Girdusky - 12/23/2012 06:12 PMOpponents of assault rifles best argument is. . ."there is NO situation or circumstance where a citizen might need an assault rifle." This writer begs to differ. -Editor This year marked the 21st anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, sparked by the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of beating the now-deceased Rodney King. During the five days, mobs around Los Angeles looted stores, burnt 3,767 buildings, caused more than $1 billion in property damage, and led to the deaths of more than 50 people and left another 4,000 injured. A story that has been forgotten since then is that of the brave storeowners in Koreatown who fended off mobs with handguns, rifles and assault weapons.

On the second day of the riots, the police had abandoned much of Koreatown. Jay Rhee, a storeowner in the area, stated to The Los Angeles Times, “we have lost faith in the police.”

Monday, December 24, 2012

In his Wednesday press conference on gun control, President Obama said something hugely important. He said that he agreed with the historical understanding of the Second Amendment, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, that it protects an individual (not a collective) right to keep and bear arms.

"Look, like the majority of Americans, I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms," he said. That might sound perfectly ordinary to most Americans. It is the whole point of the Second Amendment, after all. But that is not how the political left has misinterpreted the amendment for a long time.

Friday, December 21, 2012

The National Rifle Association’s 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut … who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime.

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one ­ nobody ­ has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

Thursday, December 20, 2012

The unimaginable horror of Sandy Hook jumpstarts another "national conversation" about firearm violence. President Barack Obama, promising "meaningful action," said: "We will have to change. ... We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end."

Let's examine four of the "commonsense" measures frequently proposed by "gun control advocates":

One, closing the "gun show loophole." What gun show loophole? Restricted from selling at guns shows prior to 1986, a licensed dealer today requires a background check whether he sells guns at a store, a gun show or the back of his SUV.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

In the wake of a monstrous crime like a madman’s mass murder of defenseless women and children at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the nation’s attention is riveted on what could have been done to prevent such a massacre.

Luckily, some years ago, two famed economists, William Landes at the University of Chicago and John Lott at Yale, conducted a massive study of multiple victim public shootings in the United States between 1977 and 1995 to see how various legal changes affected their frequency and death toll.

Landes and Lott examined many of the very policies being proposed right now in response to the Connecticut massacre: waiting periods and background checks for guns, the death penalty and increased penalties for committing a crime with a gun.

In the aftermath of the horrific Newtown, Conn., school massacre, Americans from all parts of the political spectrum agree that we need to pay more attention to mental health issues. Public death threats and incitements to violence must be taken seriously. The incendiary witch hunt against law-abiding, peaceful gun owners is neither noble nor effective. It's just plain insane.

Over the past week, I've witnessed a disturbing outbreak of off-the-rails hatred toward gun owners and Second Amendment groups. Whatever your views on guns, we can all agree: The Newtown gunman was a monster who slaughtered his own mother, five heroic educators and 20 angel-faced schoolchildren. He ignored laws against murder. He bypassed Connecticut's strict gun control regulations, and he circumvented the Sandy Hook Elementary School's security measures. Every decent American is horrified and heartsick by this outbreak of pure evil.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

On Sunday, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer went on CBS’s Face The Nation and argued that people who support gun control “have to admit that there is a Second Amendment right to bear arms”.

Schumer’s effort to reach out to the gun-rights community may be well-intentioned, but it is also deeply ironic. If the nation truly embraced the Second Amendment as it was originally written and understood, it would be the NRA’s worst nightmare.

Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of "gun control" advocates?

The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.

Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates. Washington, D.C., is a classic example, but just one among many.

There were 18 random mass shootings in the 1980s, 54 in the 1990s, and 87 in the 2000s.Has the rate of random mass shootings in the United States increased? Over the past 30 years, the answer is definitely yes. It is also true that the total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by over half since 1980, and the gun homicide rate has fallen along with it. Today, Americans are safer from violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s.

Mass shootings, defined as four or more fatalities, fluctuate from year to year, but over the past 30 years there has been no long-term increase or decrease. But "random" mass shootings, such as the horrific crimes last Friday in Newtown, Conn., have increased.

By Neil W. McCabe - Editor, Guns & Patriots
The Dec. 13 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., is an unspeakable tragedy. The victims, most of them first graders, were behind locked doors and beginning the school day with no idea of what was to follow.

In our age, there is only one other tragedy that comes close to what happened in Newtown­and sadly, other places too, the mass casualty airliner crash. There too, too many completely innocent individuals are lost to us at once.

In the mainstream media, there is a big difference in how these two occurrences are treated. In the case of the airliner disaster, whether caused by weather or by terrorists, we are told over and over again that the actual percentage of deaths by flying passengers is very small­so small that it would be foolish not to fly over such concerns.

But, what are we told after a mass shooting at a school?

In sharp contrast, we are told that because one individual out of 300 million went on a rampage, the rest of the 300 million Americans must forgo a right acknowledged in the Bill of Rights as existing before the founding of our current Republic.

While we are looking at percentages, Larry Pratt, the president of Gun Owners of America, points out: "What a lethal, false security are the Gun Free Zone laws. All of our mass murders in the last 20 years have occurred in 'Gun Free Zones."

I am not convinced that because a school in the Nutmeg State did not have an armed guard­or teacher, groundskeeper or cafeteria worker, we need to ignore the Bill of Rights.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Washington (AP) - The next big issue in the national debate over guns ­ whether people have a right to be armed in public ­ is moving closer to review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A provocative ruling by a panel of federal appeals court judges in Chicago struck down the only statewide ban on carrying concealed weapons, in Illinois. The ruling is somewhat at odds with those of other federal courts that have largely upheld state and local gun laws, including restrictions on concealed weapons, since the Supreme Court's landmark ruling declaring that people have a right to have a gun for self-defence.

In 2008, the high court voted 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller to strike down Washington's ban on handgun ownership and focused mainly on the right to defend one's own home. The court left for another day how broadly the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution may protect gun rights in other settings.

Legal scholars say the competing appellate rulings mean that day is drawing near for a new high court case on gun rights.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

This article is sure to generate a ton of emotion and that is a good thing. A “top ten” list of anything is going to be helpful to some, controversial to many and just plain flat out wrong to others. No matter what I put on the list or where I may rank it, someone is certain to tell me I’m right just as someone else is certain to tell me I’m wrong. (That’s what makes America great)!
So, here we go.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

In March, Stephen Harper’s Canadian government reversed decades of increasing restrictions on civilian firearms, scrapping the controversial long-gun registry on grounds that it was wasteful and ineffective. Gun laws, the prime minister correctly said, should focus on criminals rather than law-abiding citizens such as farmers and hunters.

Some claim that this Conservative policy flies in the face of a mountain of evidence, and even represents an assault against reason. Canadian voters seem divided on this issue, as well as some basic related questions: Are firearms in the hands of ordinary citizens a serious threat to public safety? Is registration an effective approach to controlling misuse? How useful was the long-gun registry to police? This article will answer some of those questions.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

As simple as these word are, we have been arguing about what they mean for a long time. Part of the problem is that many people engaged in the argument do not interpret the 2nd Amendment with respect for its historical context, but rather in light of what they want it to mean in support of their purposes. If we want to be honest about it, we must look to the origins of the amendment to understand it in the context of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, and only then can we consider it in our present context. The issue is further complicated by the fact that an increasingly large proportion of the U.S. population has no experience in the use of arms; they see arms as irrelevant to their lives at best or a threat at worst. This is important because the 2nd Amendment is always susceptible and becomes vulnerable when too many think it is an archaic artifact.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

A city attorney in California is taking heat for comments made during a recent city council meeting. Faced with a bankrupt city government and cutbacks to the police force, the official told citizens to "lock their door and load their guns" as a way to fight crime. Was this over the top or simply telling it like it is?

As reported by CBS in Los Angeles, San Bernardino City Attorney Jim Penman spoke before a group of about 150 local residents. They are frustrated and worried about the growing crime rate and falling police response times.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.